Mobile communication devices in use today are frequently impacted by interfering signals from various sources. A mobile communication device may be impacted by neighboring mobile communication devices that operate based on the same protocol, and also by other devices that use different communication protocols. For example, a mobile communication device using the Third Generation Partnership (3GPP) LTE protocol that communicates with a serving LTE base station may be impacted by neighboring LTE base stations and also by other wireless signals, including but not limited to Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) signals (referred to as Wi-Fi signals in the remainder of this disclosure) and Bluetooth® radio signals.
The impact of interference on a user equipment may be significant and may degrade its performance significantly. Therefore, prompt and accurate detection of interfering signals has several advantages and may help to improve user equipment performance, e.g., in terms of front-end automatic gain control, synchronization, or channel estimation.
A number of factors may increase the difficulty of identifying interfering signals. For example, the detection of interfering signals may rely in part on reference signals that are embedded into the interfering signals. Such reference signals may only be present with a certain periodicity, thereby limiting the number of measurement opportunities and increasing the time it takes to perform identification of the interfering signal. Other types of measurements may not rely on reference signals but other, more general properties associated with the interfering signals. However, such measurements lack the ability to identify some properties of the interfering signal, such as the transmission protocol associated with the interfering signal.